Adwan
Adwan (Ad: Aðwana) is a partially naturalistic con-lang invented for the sake of gaining a wider understanding of general linguistics. The language itself developed a life of its own, and with each passing day, it grows with more vocabulary, more additions, and more characteristics that make it stand out from other inflecting languages. Name The name "aðwana" comes from the archaic Adwanic noun, "aðe", which means "mind", and "wan", which means "to speak". It is an archaic compound word, not used anymore due to an evolved vocabulary, which means "a spoken mind." Phonology To view complete phonological tables of consonants, diphthongs and vowels, click here. Adwan has a moderately unique phonology, as it has extensive use of using the consonant /j/ coupled with both vowels AND consonants. It is said that Adwan tends to sound like a mixture of Icelandic, Norwegian, Czech, and Polish. Alphabet and Orthography Adwan is a fairly phonetic language; everything is sounded out as it is written. "Pevle" will always be pronounced /pevle/, and "Ar" will always be pronounced /ar/. There is only one sound change that isn't marked directly by the orthography, and that is the nasalization of ‘m’. Generally, for a lot of consonants, ’m’ will become nasalized; so if ‘m’ isn't a dominant, stressed consonant, it will be /ɱ/; A good English example is the word "symphony". You don't say /sɪmfəni:/, you say /sɪɱfəni:/. M is NEVER nazalized when in the beggining of a word, or when predecing a vowel. Note, for the vowels A, E, I, O, U and Y, an acute accent can be added to focus stress on that particular syllable (this happens a lot when the stress isn't on the penultimate syllable. When the penultimate syllable rule is broken, an acute accent occurs to guide stress, and elongate the noun). Ex: *the verb Fwývan has stress on the first syllable, as opposed to the default penultimate syllable. Also, many times declensions will switch around stress levels which will end up in acute accents falling above many vowels. Syntax and Morphology As in many Indo-European languages, Adwan is highly inflected; Adwan inflects nouns for number, grammatical case, and, seldomly, gender; Adjectives decline for adjective class, and case; Numbers decline for grammatical case; pronouns decline for number and gramatical case, and determiners decline for grammatical case. Verbs are conjugated (and agglutinated, to an extent) for tense, mood, and aspect. A distinctive feature in Adwan is the lack of auxilliary verbs, as they are all conjugated into the verb, and lack of distinction in voice. Due to heavy inflections, Adwan also lacks articles, so there is no difference between "the cat likes mice" or "a cat likes mice"'; the distinction between a regular cat liking mice, and cats generally liking mice is made thanks to the Generic tense of verbs. Word Order While old Adwan followed a VOS word order, modern Adwan has switched around into SOV and SVO word orders. Both are quite common in Adwan, and there is no exact official way of ordering words. Due to the heavy inflection that Adwan goes through, however, word order is quite free. The standard is SOV and SVO, yet many pieces of literature and poetry can follow other word orders. Other word orders are also used to emphasize things, if only used seldomly. *Þuvo afrkad Bobev. (VOS) Puts emphasis on the verb. *Þuvo Bobev afkrad. (VSO) Puts emphasis on the verb, and the subject. *Afkrad þuvo Bobev.(OVS) Puts emphasis on the apples. Usually, questions are formed using intonation and stress (and the usage of a question mark), but if incredibly important, or necessary, VSO is used. General Rules: *Adjectives don't have any specific order, though they usually precede the noun. Due to declensions, however, in many dialects, they are all grouped together and form a section of their own, and either go SOV, or SOAV, or SVOA. *It is a general rule that prepositions precede the object they are attached to. It is not a strictly enforced rule with sentences that only have one preposition, but with complex sentences with many prepositions, they must always precede the object. *Adverbs, generally, always follow a verb. *Commas do not denote stops, but merely break sentences down to a verbal phrase; it is grammatically incorrect to have more than one verb in a phrase -- a comma must separate verbs. For pauses that commas tend to be used for, such as in the English language, a hypen (-) or a double comma(,,) are used. *Usually, direct objects come first, and then indirect objects. Gender Editing. Case Adwan inflects its Nouns, Adjectives, Pronouns, and Numbers. Nouns are inflected for number, grammatical case, and occasionally, gender; Adjectives are inflected for grammatical case, and adjective type (Descriptive or Predicate); Pronouns are inflected for case, person, and number, and determiners and numbers are inflected for grammatical case. In Adwan, there are 7 cases; the Nominative, which marks the subject; the Accusative, which marks the direct object; the Ablative, which marks the causative object; the Genitive case, which marks relationship and posession; the Dative case, which marks the indirect object; the Locative case, which marks the location, and the Vocative case, which marks the noun being addressed. A good way to find out the case of a noun is to ask yourself these questions: Nominative/'Strůň:' who? what? Accusative/Ecůň: I have what/who? Ablative/Kůsůň: because of who/what? Genitive/Hentyň:'' of who/what?'' Dative/Ostreň:'' to whom/what?'' Locative/Juråň: ''at/around what?'' Vocative/Ajaraň: I call whom? Prounoun Declensions Personal pronouns Personal pronouns are the most irregular of all words in Adwan, for they don't necessarily follow a uniform way of changing affixes like Nouns and Adjectives do. Personal pronouns don't all end in the same suffix, leaving personal pronouns in Adwan to be the most irregular parts of speech in the whole language. Note: Personal Pronouns declined in the Genitive are the equivalent to both English posessive determiners, and possessive pronouns. Adwan has no distinction between posessive pronouns and posessive adjectives, for the role of posession is maintained solely by the genitive declensions of said pronouns. Demostrative Pronouns Along with personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns are irregular, too, and don't follow a pattern of suffix-changing declensions, like Nouns, Adjectives, and Numbers do. Demonstrative pronouns in Adwan have three distinctions: proximal, which refers to objects near the speaker (this, in English), medial, objects near the address, and distal, objects far from both (that for English) (Note: That in English can be both medial and distal). This is similar to the demonstrative pronouns in Spanish (este/''esto''/''esta'' for proximal, ese/eso/esa for medial, aquello/aquel/aquella for distal). If you can see, all declined forms of each demonstrative pronoun keeps the first and last letters of the word, and declines by changing, adding or subtracting infixes, rather than changing prefixes or suffixes. Adwanic demonstrative pronouns go through a process of Vowel Migration when changing to plural; each vowel is assigned a specific part in a cycle of vowels phonemes, and to pluralize, they go through a transformation that leads them to the next vowel in line. Therefore, y'' turns into ''u, u'' turns into ''e, e'' turns into ''a, and a'' turns into ''y. Relative and Interrogative Pronouns Relative and Interrogative pronouns in Adwan are moderately regular, as they follow the same declension rules Adjectives, Nouns and Determiners do. Like in many languages, relative and interrogative pronouns are pretty much identical, but in Adwan, it's only the roots that are identical, for each is then declined according to not only grammatical case, but according to whether the use of it is Relative or Interrogative. *The root word for "what" is þeða, but when used in the accusative as an interrogative ("She saw what movie?") would be þeðna (Voé þeðna?), as opposed to the relative usage of what ("What she saw was a movie."), where it is still in the accusative, since it is a relative pronoun, the declension is different, leaving what to be þeðmna. Pronouns will always end in -ða; it is up to their class (relative or interrogative) to decide what declensions they should take on. Indefinite Pronouns Indefinite Pronouns are pronouns that specify unspecified objects, places or things. As with other parts of speech in Adwan, they are too, interchangeable in usage and their function depends solely on their declension. Indefinite prounouns can be used as determiners, and even nouns, so their declensions are extremely important. Indefinite pronouns do not distinguish between number, and only decline for grammatical case. They all end in -we. Tugryfwe -- Everyone Verb Conjugations Verbs in Adwan are conjugated by affix changes and agglutinations, depending on the tenses used. Verbs in Adwan are conjugated for Tense, Mood, Aspect Number and Person, not to mention the class of verbs they are. There are three classes of verbs in Adwan; -an verbs, -en verbs, and -on verbs. Adwan has approximately 10 different conjugations, with 16 different kinds of seperate conjugations that agglutinate into original conjugations (such as Negation, Affirmation, etc.). Adwanic verbs also conjugate for ten Persons (First person singular, second person singular, third person neuter singular, third person masculine singular, third person feminine singular, fourth person singular, first person plural, second person plural, third person plural, and fourth person plural.) with an extra 4th person that works as a generalized person with which works differently from third persons. An example of 4th person would be the English "one"; example "One who learns is one who sees", "one" is in the fourth person, as it is a generalized, unnamed noun. It is called the Indefinite 4th person in Adwan, as it is indefinite, as opposed to the other definite persons. Note: There is only one third person plural, for Adwanic verbs don't make gender distinctions in the plural person form. Characteristics Of many languages, the verb is always one of the dominant types of words that work in a sentence, for they are, after all, the action of the sentence. Imagine a world without verbs. You couldn't be. Also, in Adwan, verbs are of the dominant classes of words, and, as a result of such importance put into verbs, they were, and are, to this day, the first part of speech to come in a sentence. In English, a sentence is made with a subject, a verb, and an object, like I like apples, but in Adwan, the verbs come first, followed by the object, and then the subject, leaving I like apples to be Þuva afkrað, which, in a literary translation, is saying Like apples. Adwan is a pro-drop language; this means that pronouns in the nominative are seldom ever used. Nominative pronouns are integrated with the vowel during conjugation, therefore having pronouns attached to the verb would be redundant. Þuva is like-i, and þuvy is likes-it. Because of this, a great deal of importance is placed upon the conjugation of the verb. In addition to being a pro-drop language, Adwan also lacks auxilliary verbs; various conjugations are in place of auxilliary verbs such as have ''and ''to be, which are common auxilliary verbs when helping state a tense in English. Because of the lack of auxilliary verbs, Adwanic verbs also lack a past participle, but retain a verb root to conjugate with; and, adding to that, a higher number of conjugations exist to the verbs (such as the desirative, i want to be in Adwan could be stated in one word, þuða'þaja'',' the break down of this word goes back to Adwan's tendency to agglutinate verbs after a certain amount of conjugation; another example, yet a much more complex example, is ''þuðacnaþajalyjy, or i probably would have wanted to have been -- note, agglutination rules will be described for further conjugation and ver agglutination rules -- which uses one tense and two moods;the perfect present tense, the eventive mood, and the desirative mood). All in all, the Adwanic verb is definitely an outstanding feat in the Adwanic language, as it could potentially carry what English would take words, all in one, albeit full of affixes, word Irregular Verbs Unlike many, many languages, irregular verbs in Adwan are seldom. The only recorded irregular verbs in Adwan are the verbs Dyn, "To say", Ąn'' "to be(for adjectives)", and ''Čyren "to be (for locations). Ironically, the main form of the verb "to be", Þuðan, is quite regular, as it has no irregularities. This might be due to the fact the original Adwanic "to be", Ąnečnuþeðan, was broken into three different to be's. Note: While verbs may be considered "irregular", they are still conjugated to Adwanic Verb rules, as they are adjusted to work correctly. To Be Unlike many, many languages, Adwanic doesn't have just one form of "to be", nor does it have two. Adwan has three different verbs of "to be"; one for adjectives (Ąn), one for location (Cyren), and one for general statements not covered by the previous two (Þuðan). All of these three irregular verbs still follow regular conjugation. They're only really irregular for their infinitive form, really. Verb Tenses Adwanic verbs are conjugated for Tense, Voice, Mood and Aspect. Along with this, Adwan is a pronoun-drop language, where pronouns are NOT used in conjugations. For example: To say "I am a boy"(which utilizes þuðan), would be; *''Þuða pevlé.'' rather than *''Þuða pevlé a.'' which uses the pronoun as a subject. Simple Simple Present The simple present tense is very well known in the English language, for it is the general present tense (To be is I am, To eat is I eat, etc) Note: All verbs conjugate the same, even if they have different endings (there are three; -an, -en, -on). Simple Past The simple past form states things that happened in a specified past, only once, as opposed to the imperfect, which tells of things that happened continously in the past. The simple past in Adwan is comparable to the passé simple in French, and the simple past in English (I am is I was; Fr: Je suis is Je fus, etc.) Unlike many complex conjugations, the simple past in Adwan can be acquired by adding -é to the present tense conjugation. Simple Future The simple future in Adwan states things that will happen; it is comparable to that of English's I will. However, it makes no distinction between future tenses like Spanish and French do (take Spanish: Yo voy a ser to sere; French's Je vais être to Je serai). Again, the simple present can be acquired by adding the sufix -'rę' to a verb that has been conjugated for person.'' '' Perfect Perfect Present The present perfect states things that have happened at an unspecified time before the present. It is the equivalent to I have been in English. Unlike the simple past, it has no specified time. It is also the equivalent to Spanish's Yo he sido. It is also comparable to French's Passé Composé, which for to be (être), it is J'ai été, ''and, oddly enough, to French's ''Imperfect. However, the Perfect Present in Adwan is only used for unspecified times, rather than the imperfect, which is the perfect present with a specified time. Perfect Past The perfect past states things that had happened before a specific time. In English, it is formed by inserting had with the past participle. In Adwan it's even more synthetic than that. Phrases *More to come when I stop being lazy. Category:Languages